Venture capital firm Matrix nabs young star from Square

SAN FRANCISCO, March 7 (Reuters) - Venture capital firm Matrix Partners said it had hired 28-year-old Jared Fliesler, an executive at the mobile-payments company Square, as general partner.

Matrix had been talking to Fliesler for about the last year, said general partner Dana Stadler, who believes Fliesler will be able to give good advice to early-stage companies, Matrix’s focus area.

“He has a nice style to him in terms of being able to partner and listen and contribute,” Stadler said. “He has an impeccable track record in partnering with founders.”

Fliesler joined Square in 2011 as vice president for user acquisition and business operations. He had formerly worked at Google as director of product management after Google acquired application maker Slide, his previous employer.

“The thing I realized I really love was early stage, shaking the snow globe, saying ‘What is going to work?'” Fliesler said.

“I‘m addicted to startups.”

He left Square because it had grown so large that he believed it was harder to make a big difference in the company’s trajectory, he said. Square’s processing business handles about $10 billion in sales from 800,000 activated accounts, compared with $2 billion in sales and 3 million accounts when he started.